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June 26, 2010

G76: Red Sox 4, Giants 2

Buchholz (1-1-0-1-2, 17) hyperextended his left knee running to second base in the second inning, so it was up to the firm of Atchison Ramirez Delcarmen Richardson Okajima Bard & Papelbon LLC to uphold Boston's early lead.

Darnell McDonald hit a solo home run in the first and Mike Cameron drilled a three-run shot to dead center in the second. After Cameron's dong, only two Red Sox batters reached base: Buchholz's single immediately following the HR and Marco Scutaro's two-out double in the fifth. San Francisco pitchers retired 21 of the last 22 Boston batters.

Jonathan Papelbon needed only eight pitches to retire the Giants in order in the ninth.

The Red Sox have acquired infielder-outfielder Eric Patterson from the A's. (SoSH)

The Dodgers lead the Yankees 9-4 in the 7th and the Rays beat the Diamondbacks 5-3, so if LA wins, Boston and Tampa Bay will be 2 GB.

Buchholz is 3rd in the AL in ERA (2.47) and 1st in ERA+ (181); his ERA+ is 5th in MLB.

Buchholz's BB/9 is still too high, however: 3.7*. It's 10th worst among the 56 qualifying AL starters. Plus, Jon Lester is 11th and John Lackey is 14th. The Red Sox have allowed the 4th most walks in the AL (271, only 10 fewer than the #1 Angels).

Random Thing: Looking at the team pitching stats, there is a huge difference in wild pitches, with the Diamondbacks at 45 and the Padres with 12. (Arizona's Edwin Jackson has 11 all by himself!)

Ignoring Buchholz's four games pitched in 2007, here are his opponents' slash stats:

A nice, steady decline in all three catagories, especially slugging. After allowing 1.3 HR/9 in 2008 and 2009, that rate has dropped to 0.3 this year. In roughly similar numbers of batters faced over the last three years, he has allowed 11, 13, and 3 home runs, respectively.

Bumgarner, a 20-year-old lefty, is making his 2010 debut. His major league experience consists of four games (10 innings) towards the end of last season. With Fresno (AAA) this year, he has a 3.16 ERA in 14 starts.

Stupid FOX is still trying to claim credit for the whole Daniel Nava experience, just because his debut was on their channel. As if they're the ones who discovered him in the independent league. Dumbasses.

It doesn't feel like we're up 4-0. I can't even enjoy this game. I hadn't even finished being upset about Pedey yet and now I'm really upset about HH and interleague play in general.

And this was supposed to be a good day. My nice new HDTV went completely kablooey 2 weeks after the warranty ended, and I spent the past 3 weeks watching on a 19-year-old 13" TV with no remote. The nice TV finally got fixed today and I'm back in HD (not to mention it's big enough for me to actually see the score now). But now this.